Chiseled in Stone
by Tolakasa
Summary: Preseries, AU. The only consolation Jamie could give his niece's family was a piece of rock and the preservation of her secrets. OC POV. Companion piece to In This Town.


**Chiseled in Stone**

This is the way of things in the wider world: when a loved one dies, her resting place is marked by stone.

My people know this to be silly. There is nothing permanent, neither death nor granite; the soul is eternal and the grandest marker erodes to pebbles given enough time. But Marjeya—no, _Mary_. Mary was the name she chose, when she left us to share her heart with a warrior of the wider world; it was Mary, not Marjeya, who bled and burned that night.

Mary, not Marjeya, whose husband sought solace in the truth, and found only vengeance.

There was nothing left of her body after the fire. Demonfire does that. There was nothing for her family to cling to for the shadow-rites that pass as rituals of the dead for them; no body to view, to encase in wood and concrete and metal, for a paid priest to murmur words over by rote, to lower into the earth to dwell hermetically separate from it. This is important to those in the wider world, where they foolishly seek things like _closure_ and _healing_ after death. As for myself...

Niece she was, daughter of my sister, but in the house of the _stac'he_, I raised her, until I was sent to hunt in the wider world. She was the daughter I was forbidden from fathering. Daughter, apprentice, protégé. She loved me as in another lifetime she might have loved a father.

The elders disapproved—of my contact with her, of my gracing that shadow of a memorial. But the elders were far away, and besides, the elders disapprove of much that we _stac'he_ must deal with in the wider world. It is the price _they_ pay for _our_ sacrifice. More suspicion would have been raised had no one from Mary's "family" been there.

I made the decision about the marker at the service, the arguments carved into my brain by the way Mary's beloved sat there, oblivious to everything but his own grief—even to his sons, the infant in his arms unaware, the dazed and confused boy clutching his father's arm or leg and refusing to move, or even to speak. Nothing was more precious to that man than his sons.

Nothing, perhaps, except Mary.

His other family was dead, I knew that much. He had met me only once. I was a stranger. John stared past me when I introduced myself and gently reminded him of our previous meeting, when Mary had brought her new husband to my safehouse, silently pleading for my approval of the man.

I had approved, of course, though it hurt as much as the claws of the wendigo that had crippled me. I saw the warrior who slept beneath the shell of the mechanic. There is no magic more powerful than the meeting of warriors' hearts. The earth itself might have created him for her.

I approved, because I could not deny her her happiness, and when they left, John somewhat bewildered and Mary's eyes shining brilliantly with joy, I retreated to my rooms and wept for the loss of my child.

John, that poor, shattered man, did not have even that outlet. It is not accepted for men in the wider world to weep, not even over the deepest loss. Certainly not in public, not even in the "approved" arena of a memorial, as if grief somehow differentiated between "public" and "private" and sheathed its knives accordingly. The warriors of the wider world do not often break their composure even in private.

I am a warrior, sacrificed to that life by my people. I know the damage such forced stoicism can wreak.

John's account of what happened that night disturbed me. Bad enough for Cairzath to _burn_ one of us, but to physically shed her blood, to _dare_ to _touch_ her...

If her blood, spilled in such a perverted sacrifice, touched the infant, there is no telling what it might awaken. Magic is thick in our family, though neither Marjeya nor I was born with it, and magic is often the special gift of the second-born. The first-born are the warriors, the protectors; the third-born are priests and wise ones; the other children may choose as they wish.

But I could not tell him. Could not tell John Winchester that he was not insane, that the horror he had seen had been real. There were too many well-meaning friends about, their minds dull with the mundane concerns of the wider world, telling him to forget it, that it had been electrical, an accident, that the boys needed him.

On the last part, at least, I could agree.

Her blood should have protected her. Should have protected _them_. Even a demon as powerful as Cairzath knows better than to attack the least exile of the Covre Meyanevil, and Marj—_Mary_ was not the least. Our power is of this world, as his is not, and is far greater. We are part of the earth itself, a distinction neither demon nor angel can claim.

Lacking that, _Mary_ should have protected them. No one knows the protective charms better than the _stac'he_ who are forbidden homes of their own; we cannot draw them once and forget them, we who seldom spend two nights running in the same bed. She made games of drawing salt lines and sigils with her firstborn. I know, for the one time I met Dean, on Mary's last visit to my safehouse, just before she learned of her second pregnancy, he asked with wide-eyed innocence if I had a little boy who helped me draw _my_ salt lines.

Mary shushed him quickly, before he could show me with his crayons how well he could draw a pentagram. It seems John did not know of that particular game, played between mother and son, a story-world of hunters and their supernatural prey; it was their secret.

I wonder, often, if Dean remembers any of those games, or if his mind buried those memories in self-defense, letting him believe that he learned those skills only from his father afterwards.

I saw, at that memorial service, that grief was awakening the warrior who had slept these years. I could have hoped that his children, _her_ children, would keep him firmly in the reality of the wider world, but I knew better. They were not enough to counter John's first terrifying glimpse of the world beside our own. I grieved for him as well, as I would for any warrior, knowing there could be only one outcome. Among my people, to throw oneself into the fight the way he did is merely another way to commit suicide.

I could not stop him from taking the boys. He did not know me, not as anything other than Mary's uncle. There was no way to preserve Mary's delicate web of lies _and_ explain to him the strength of our relationship. Moreover, the loss of his comfortable world made him paranoid. He trusted no one with his children, not even the friends who had once baby-sat them when he and Mary slipped off for nights to themselves.

The only thing I could do was to set in motion the events which led him to Missouri, a rare woman of the wider world with both power and knowledge. I had known her for many years. She could be trusted to bring him into the world of _stac'he_ and hunters. Some of those he sought training from were _stac'he_, men and women who had trained and fought alongside Marjeya, before she became Mary. It was the least we could do to honor Mary's memory and children and the man she loved.

Not one of them breathed a word of knowing Mary before, of seeing her in her children, though in the confines of my safehouse they often spoke of nothing else. Because they respected her, they preserved her secret.

Dean had her heart, they said, and all the blessings of the firstborn.

John did not stay in training near us long enough for us to learn about Samuel.

For the boys, all I could do was mark the grave their mother never inhabited. Mary had wanted nothing for them but normal lives—though, of course, John had never understood what that truly meant to her; never understood what a wondrous new thing his humdrum, non-magical life had been to her.

Perhaps it was just as well that he never knew. It might have only compounded his grief.

I visited the grave only once, the day the marker was set. It was my last day in the wider world. I retired. I knew, standing at the empty grave, reading the marker that bore her final alias, that I had been too long removed from our people. It was time for me to go home.

Husbands and sons are not the only ones who must grieve.

**_the end_**


End file.
